Reflecting

Wednesday, January 22nd., Cadogan Square, London.

Out of sorts today. Bit of a chill on the liver. Didn't sleep well last night; not even as well as usual. And I couldn't settle to my nap this afternoon, so I am now lethargic, mildly irritable and generally dejected. We are all more or less slaves to our internal organs, especially the digestion. Wells described it nicely in the first part of "Mr. Polly". He was aiming for humour of course, but truth was there.

I was at the British Museum on Monday, just getting ideas, though I didn't get any. Went in to look at the Elgin marbles. I hear that the Greek government want them to be returned and put on display in Athens. Not back in place on the Parthenon, but in a specially constructed museum. I was in Athens a couple of years ago and ascended to view the Parthenon. Impressive, and moving. My overall feeling was sadness that the place had been more or less destroyed as part of a minor skirmish in a stupid war, after thousands of years of standing proud above the city. Having been brought to England by Elgin has probably saved the sculptures from damage and perhaps destruction, and I am glad they are in London to be seen by people like me whenever we wish. But I would be hard pressed to mount a moral defence for their retention now.

I look about London and wonder if there is anything here that would excite people in two thousand years time if it were still in place? Plenty of monumental architecture of course but nothing original that stands out. The Tower probably. Perhaps Greenwich Naval College? The Reading Room at the B.M.? What would most reflect our age and genius in my opinion would be one of the great stations - St. Pancras or Paddington. I don't expect people will still be using trains in two thousand years but I think they would admire the 'spirit' of the station in the way we admire the Parthenon.

In the dark

Tuesday, November 9th., Les Sablons.

Today I rose in excellent health, began my last act, and at 5.30 had written one third of it. 

I received a complete bound set of my Tauchnitz works from the Baron. Though ugly, the format was not too ugly to please me. I put the row of twelve volumes in Marguerite's secretaire. Pauline seized "A Great Man" out of the lot, and has been reading it at every spare moment and smiling to herself the whole time. Not to be outdone, I began to read "Buried Alive", and also smiled the whole time. I don't think I have ever read a funnier book than this unless it's Wells's "The History of Mr. Polly".

Dark early of course but I determined to go out for a night walk, and did. I have always enjoyed getting out when it is dark, starting when I was young and needed to get out from under my extensive family. Very different walking here from walking the streets of Burslem. Two ideas came into my mind as I walked. One was to ask the question, "Has any author successfully conveyed the sensation of night walking?" The other was to think about how different the experience of darkness must have been before the advent of artificial lighting. Just imagine at this time of year how people managed with candles, or oil lamps, or just the light from a fire. Did the darkness make them melancholy? Bears thinking about.

Pleasure and reward

What a very versatile writer Salley Vickers is. After about fifty pages of "Dancing Backwards" I was convinced that this was a 'comic' novel, and in a way it is, but the writer's more serious intent gradually became clear. I suppose that the common denominator in Vickers' books is the quest for personal authenticity - at least that is how they seem to me. But this is very different in style, if not in purpose, from say "Where Three Roads Meet" my favourite of Vickers' fiction so far. Different also from "Instances of the Number 3" which is the one that recurs most frequently to my memory.

Violet, the 'heroine', is a woman of late middle age, still physically attractive we gather but recovering from the recent death of her husband and on a transatlantic voyage to New York to renew acquaintance with an old friend. I'm not sure that Violet is quite plausible - isn't she too intelligent and experienced to be quite so ready to accommodate herself to other people? Still she is decidedly likeable and seems to have a gift for drawing out other people. During the course of the voyage she reflects on the events of her early years which have significantly contributed to her becoming the person she is now, and gradually comes to realise where and why things went wrong. She also takes up dancing which is clearly a metaphor for her self-emancipation. 

The novel is populated with a cast of interesting, if rather two-dimensional, characters who interact in ways to reinforce the message that we must be honest with and about ourselves, and that if we are unhappy we only have ourselves to blame. It put me in mind of "The History of Mr Polly" - if you don't like your life then you can change it! Vickers is clearly erudite but never pretentious. I particularly like Violet's occasional literary references which are generally not picked up by her interlocutors. 

This is an easy and rewarding book to read - it made me smile, and it made me think. No small feat!